Southern Review

Bret Lott, editor and director of TSR, writes:

Strangely and beautifully and sadly enough, the latest issue of The Southern Review — mailed to subscribers just week before last, right as the hurricane was making way for the Gulf Coast — has turned out to be a very special issue for the artwork on the cover and that featured inside. The artist, Billy Solitario, lives near GULFPORT (and I trust you have seen the pictures of the devastation there); as of this writing, we have not been able to contact him. The paintings themselves are of the Gulf Coast –one of them is even titled “Spiral Cloud over Levee,” another one titled “Storm Over the Mississippi”; still others in the portfolio are of barrier islands on the Gulf Coast — places that don’t even exist anymore. The artwork was selected about a year ago, and the synchronicity of this is a little too much to think about — the issue, which went out just two weeks ago, celebrates a coastland that is, suddenly, gone. Also, and again thesynchronicity of this is too much to behold, the lead poems in this issue are by Peter Cooley, poet at now-closed Tulane University; we have heard that he is safe in Houston at the time of this writing.

TSR is trying to raise funds for hurricane student relief. If you can help, please send a check for $8 or more to:THE SOUTHERN REVIEWOLD PRESIDENT’S HOUSELSUBATON ROUGE LA 70803

Make the check out to LSU Foundation, and write Hurricane Student Relief Fund on the memo line.